


Five Things That Shocked Teyla

by tielan



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: 5 Things, Character Study, Gen, community: sg_five_prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-25
Updated: 2011-10-25
Packaged: 2017-10-24 22:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teyla understands how they think; that does not mean she agrees with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things That Shocked Teyla

**Author's Note:**

> Started for the 'Five Things Of Earth That Shocked Teyla' prompt over at the LJ comm sg_five_prompts, and finished for a Teyla comment-a-thon.

She thinks it romantic but naive. Nothing lasts eternally - not love, nor flesh, nor desire. Things stand as long as they will, but life flows with the seasons and is not set in stone - and even if it were, stone can be broken.

Her relationships have been for the time, for the moment. Even Kanaan, though she loves him, is not made to live in Atlantis - just as she is not prepared to return to Athos for good.

There is no explaining the Lantean mentality. Life, in Teyla's view, is not so narrow as to say "Once, and once only, forever and ever."

\--

Family is important in Pegasus - how not when the Wraith come and rend sister from brother, wife from husband, parent from child? Yet it is in that rending that family is defined for Teyla's people - blood ties and 'two parents' are of less concern among her people than commonality and shared space.

Charin shared only the vaguest of blood ties with her, yet the woman was mentor, guide, and family to her,  and John, Ronon, and Rodney have no ties of blood all, yet she would not hesitate to leave her son to be brought up by them.

Well, perhaps not by Rodney.

Still, when parents are taken by the Wraith, children fed upon for a moment's meal, nobody stops to ask if the survivors are in a 'proper' family unit consisting of a mother, a father, and their children.

\--

There is no doubt that people deal best in relationships with primacy. The bonds of connection are best when undisturbed by jealousy, and when one loves it can be difficult to share. And yet, among the Athosians and other nomadic tribes, a woman's children are her own, no matter who has sired them, and many marriages are open by arrangement if the partners wish for anchorage but desire others, too.

Monogamy - as the expedition's morals seem to require, particularly among women - is not a bad thing. There is benefit in stability, true, but there is also advantage in broadening the genetic possibilities, to have children with many fathers, the potentiality for a child with something different brought by a man who might not have the time or inclination for fatherhood.

She says none of this to either Kanaan or John, of course.

Teyla feels no shame in desire, although she would not hurt another.

\--

She thinks it ridiculous to be required to hide one's sexual preferences, as though it were something dirty, not to be seen or spoken of. She understands the need to be careful of relationships, respectful of ties that are already in existence, balanced in judgement and sober in affection, but she does not understand why an organisation might accept that people have such desires and then require them to conceal such or else give up their profession.

She thinks - although she does not say this to John or Evan or Sam - that it is like mutilating a child's hands and then blaming it for not being able to perform delicate work.

\--

"They will hold onto Atlantis 'just in case'," Teyla rages to John later, when the sunset sky reflects in the sluggish chill of the Potomac River - the light of Pegasus' hopes fading with the light of day. "Because Pegasus is unimportant."

The IOA hemmed and hawwed, prevaricating like children telling stories to hide the truth - that they had no intention of returning the city of the Ancestors to Pegasus.

"They're scared." John stares out towards the edifices on the other side. "We can fight back against slavery - the Jaffa did it, and our history is littered with religious rebellions, but the Wraith want our lives, and they can't be reprogrammed or deactivated."

"And that excuses it?"

"No."

For a moment, she regrets having snapped at him so. Yet her anger is justified. It sickens her, clutching at her throat with fear for Torran, so far away in Pegasus, left there when the city came to Earth. What kind of galaxy will he grow in, where the Wraith have a free hand and nothing to hold them back?

"We'll keep arguing it."

"I know."

But Teyla already knows there are no words that will convince the IOA that Atlantis is needed in the Pegasus galaxy more than they feel it is needed on Earth.


End file.
